Can one USB hub be connected into a port on ANOTHER USB hub without ptoblem?
Asked by
Quagmire (
2088)
August 15th, 2009
I want to know if I can connect a 7 port hub to one of the ports on a 4 port hub. The 7 port hub has a power supply. Using Vista Ultimate 64 bit.
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13 Answers
Shouldn’t be a problem, but it would probably work better if both hubs were powered.
I’ve done this myself and everything worked okay.
sometime it’s a problem if the hubs aren’t self powered. The hubs that depends on power from the computer will only work if plug directly to the computer.
It should work, but if you start encountering any problems, that would be the first place I would look.
You can daisy-chain the USB Hubs to additional Hubs, up to a maximum of 127 USB devices.
How would a daisy chain connection look?
The term “daisy chain” simply means connecting one item to the next to the next. So in this case, daisy chaining your USB hubs would be doing exactly what you propose, plugging one hub into another hub.
@johnpowell, aye it is great isn’t it? I would just caution someone against over-doing the daisy chain effect, as you may get diminished returns from connecting a shit-ton of USB devices to one USB interface. USB is depenent on the computer’s CPU’s availability, so the ton of devices may end up causing your machine to end up crazy laggy… yes, laggy is a word
@blastfamy :: absolutely. This is where Firewire beats the shit out of USB.
And USB hubs can suck. I have a powered one and my iPod and Flip camera will not work through it. The Wacom and camera and mouse and keyboard do. WTF? I don’t have the balls to try the external drives on it. Luckily the drives are Firewire, so I use that.
I’ve made the connections. So far, so good.
@johnpowell , you get better results using a hub on a USB 2.0 port. Tie even a couple of devices together on a 1.1 port, and you’re going to have lousy performance. I think the newer Macs have USB 2.0 ports, but Apple was slow to adopt it. FireWire is better than USB 2.0, but you don’t have too many compatible devices out there.
Plus a USB-Firewire cable is very expensive.
Do I still have to worry about performance if we’re talking about I user accessing only one machine at a time (ex., me at the PC, either printing, OR scanning, OR accessing the external drive, OR…??
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